Rate Drop At Capital One Bank

As of 7/5/2012, the interest rate on Capital One Bank's in-branch "High Yield Free Checking" account is 0.75% (down from 1.00%) in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut market area.

As of August 2, back up to 1.00% on balances up to 100k...

Yeah, I just got back from Canada, and noticed that the High Yield Checking is back up to 1.00%. Interestingly, I checked my statements, and all of my statements, including the one that just closed, showed a rate of 1.00%. So it appears that the rate drop never actually took effect, despite the fact that Capital One's website was showing a rate of 0.75% for four weeks!

When I opened the account, it was explained to me that the "lock" was that the rate would be 5x the national average (whatever that happened to be) for one year, not the specific 1.00% rate. I "interrogated" the CSR on the phone and the branch manager about that very point, because the letter inviting me to open the account was rather opaque about the rate lock (in one place, it implied a rate lock of 1.00%, but the fine print on the reverse side seemed to support what the CSR told me). Anyway, given that my account (and Larkin's) was unaffected by last month's rate drop, it seems at very least that Capital One is, in fact, locking the rate.